“I’m focused on things like this — the ‘Playground to Parks,’ ‘Parks to Playgrounds,’ or ‘Pavement to Parks’ — all of these initiatives that we’ve got,” Newsom said, twice fumbling the name of the effort he had just announced about making streets and parking lots into mini-parks.

The Chronicle

Garry South. Not on Newsom’s team anymore.

Sounds like focus to us. To be fair, the mayor’s been energetic and in good spirits of late.

“I’m focused on the job and I’m focused on my family,” Newsom said. “In the next 10 days or so … I’ll make a decision. And at that time will express, if I run, why it is I am running — if I don’t, why it is that I’m not.”

“My family, we’ve worked through it,” the mayor said today. “We know what we can do and we can’t, and what we’re willing to do together, my wife and I and our baby.”

He wouldn’t comment on why he thought South sent out his missile now, but the editorial board at Calitics, a state political news blog, called on South to immediately resign from his post as chief campaign strategist for lieutenant governor candidate Janice Hahn.

“Petty attacks like those you have begun to level against other candidates — including attacks on Jerry Brown’s age — not only distract from those issues, but they undermine your own candidate,” the Calitics folks said in an open letter to South.

They went on to say:

Your attack on Gavin Newsom is highly unethical. (See below the fold.) By using against him conversations you held with Newsom while he was a client of yours you are not only breaching the trust you held as a senior advisor to Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign, you are also potentially making Newsom into a sympathetic figure, further undermining Hahn’s cause.

“The city weighs most heavily on me,” Newsom said. “I love this job. I really do. It’s an incredible gift to be mayor of San Francisco. I cannot impress upon you more, that that weighs most heavily on the decision.”